The Well-Tempered Ear
The Madison New Music Festival launches the Wisconsin Composers Project with a virtual online concert this Friday night, Sept. 25
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post:
The Madison New Music Festival is pleased to announce the launch of the Wisconsin Composers Project.
Both a community resource and annual series, the project consists of a database and a virtual concert meant to increase composers’ visibility and encourage local curators and performers to collaborate with their neighbors.
We invite all Wisconsin-affiliated composers to sign up to be included in the database on our website: https://madisonnewmusic.org/aboutwcp
Please join us for the live streaming event of the Wisconsin Composers Project Concert on this Friday night, Sept. 25, at 7:30 p.m. CDT on our website at https://madisonnewmusic.org and enjoy new music from all over Wisconsin from the comfort and safety of your home.
The pre-recorded concert will profile five Wisconsin-based composers (below) and performances of their works, one of which refers to the pandemic quarantine.
Audience members will hear directly from the composers about their music and influences, and enjoy the diversity of the Wisconsin musical community.
Featured composers and their works include:
Brent Michael Davids (above, top left): In Wisconsin Woods, performed by the composer. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the UW-Whitewater Chamber Singers and the Medicine Bear Singers perform “Sanctus: Singing for Power” from Davids’ Requiem for America.)
Jerry Hui (above, top right), a UW-Madison graduate who now teaches at UW-Stout: Quarantine Canzonets, performed by soprano Jennifer D’Agostino and baritone Michael Roemer.
Laura Schwendinger (above, bottom left), an internationally recognized and prize-winning composer and UW-Madison professor: All the Pretty Little Horses, performed by cellist Trace Johnson.
Asha Srinivasan (above, top center): Dyadic Affinities, performed by tubist Tom Curry.
Lawren Brianna Ware (above, bottom right): Borealis, performed by the composer.
The suggested donation to stream this concert is $15 per person.
For more information, please visit our website at madisonnewmusic.org or find us on Facebook (@Madison New Music Festival) or Instagram (@madisonnewmusic).
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Classical music: The Wisconsin Chamber Choir will celebrate the Americas with two world premieres this Friday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Wisconsin Chamber Choir (below) will give two performances — one in Madison and one in Milwaukee — of the program “I Hear America Singing.”
The Madison program features two world premieres: Alleluia by Wayne Oquin and Shenandoah by Jae Lee. The Madison performance will also include a special guest ensemble: The University of Wisconsin–Whitewater Chamber Singers.
The local performance on this Friday, April 13, is at 7:30 p.m. in Grace Episcopal Church (below), 116 West Washington Ave., on the Capitol Square.
On next Saturday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m., the WCC will perform at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 914 East Knapp Street, Milwaukee.
The concert is a musical celebration of all the Americas — North and South — and all Americans.
Also, in recognition of Robert Gehrenbeck’s 10th anniversary as artistic director, the WCC presents the world premiere of Alleluia by New York composer and Juilliard School faculty member Wayne Oquin.
Inspired by Randall Thompson’s classic setting of the same one-word text, Oquin’s new version updates Thompson’s musical style in his own harmonic language, which has been compared to Morten Lauridsen’s.
An extremely versatile musician, Oquin (below) boasts recent commissions and performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony, the United States Air Force Band, the Houston Chamber Choir, and the King’s Singers.
At the Madison concert the WCC will be joined by the UW-Whitewater Chamber Singers performing their own world premiere, Shenandoah, by New York composer, organist and former jazz pianist Jae Lee (below).
The remainder of the program spans music of four centuries and multiple nationalities. Masterpieces of the U.S. choral repertoire — Samuel Barber’s Reincarnations and Charles Ives’s Psalm 67 — share billing with a diverse selection of works from throughout the hemisphere.
They include music by Mexican Baroque master Manuel de Samaya (below top); Argentinian tango composer Astor Piazzolla; African-American composers Bobby McFerrin, Hall Johnson, W. C. Handy, and Rosephanye Powell; and Native-American composer and longtime friend of the WCC, Brent Michael Davids (below bottom).
(You can hear a work that Robert Gehrenbeck commissioned for the UW-Whitewater Chamber Singers from Wayne Oquin in the YouTube video at the bottom, performed by the Houston Chamber Choir.)
The WCC’s award-winning organist, Mark Brampton Smith (below), will perform Samuel Barber’s virtuosic Wondrous Love: Variations On a Shape-Note Hymn on two amazing pipe organs: the 1987, 38-rank Casavant at Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, and the 2012, 51-rank Schantz at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Milwaukee.
Founded in 1998, the Wisconsin Chamber Choir has established a reputation for excellence in the performance of oratorios by Bach, Handel, Mozart and Brahms; a cappella works from various centuries; and world premieres.
Artistic director Robert Gehrenbeck (below), who directs choral activities at the UW-Whitewater, has been hailed by critics for his vibrant and emotionally compelling interpretations of a wide variety of choral masterworks.
Advance tickets for the April 13 performance in Madison are available for $20 ($10 for students) from www.wisconsinchamberchoir.org, via Brown Paper Tickets, or at Orange Tree Imports and Willy Street Coop (all three locations).
The April 21 performance in Milwaukee will be presented for a free-will offering.
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